But a study conducted by Principled Technologies on behalf of Stratus Technologies and NEC indicates that this doesn't necessarily need to happen if you have the right server architecture. The study shows that database performance scales linearly as the number of "virtual CPUs" increased, even though the amount of physical memory on the system stayed flat at 48GB.

Of course, the assumption here is that IT organizations will want to buy a new server to run mission-critical applications on top of virtual machines. There's no doubt that IT organizations can save money doing this; they just have to come up with the capital first.

But as Denny Lane, director of product management for Stratus, points out that with its servers, fault tolerance comes built in and prices start at $15,000. So no matter what happens with the performance of mission-critical applications on virtual machines, IT organizations can at least be certain that the application won't crash. And Stratus has put up a $50,000 guarantee to back that up.

When you think about the price of a server relative to the value of the mission-critical application, however, maybe it does make sense to spend a little now on new more efficient hardware than it does to try to rationalize existing servers running mission-critical applications. After all, what's going price for virtualization peace of mind these days?

IT Solutions Builder
TOP IT RESOURCES TO MOVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD

Which topic are you interested in?

Mobile

Security

Networks/IoT

Cloud

Data Storage

Applications

Development

IT Management

Other

What is your company size?

What is your job title?

What is your job function?

Searching our resource database to find your matches...

Subscribe to our Newsletters

Sign up now and get the best business technology insights direct to your inbox.

Advertiser Disclosure:
Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which QuinStreet receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. QuinStreet does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.